Sanctify Christ In Your Hearts

Dear Friend,

This weekend we find ourselves right between the celebrations of First Holy Communion (last Sunday) and Confirmation (May 17). We’ve landed, in other words, smack dab on Mother’s Day! To all mothers - and to those who help mothers live their vocation: we hold you in prayer this Sunday, along with all our mothers and grandmothers who have gone before us and now rest in the peace of Christ. 

No better way to honor our mothers than to heed the opening words of our second reading: Sanctify Christ in your hearts. Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, herself a mother and teacher, tells us that this admonition is directed specifically “to people who are marginalized and suffering” (Ponder, Contemplative Bible Study, Year A, p. 134). She continues: “The promise is that - through Christ - we are born into God, belong to God, and contain God’s Spirit in us.” Christ in our hearts opens us to the creative work of the Spirit.

Prompted by that very Spirit, my Franciscan brother Ed Tverdek has written a wonderful little article entitled “The Meaning of Coincidence”, which, among other matters, considers the phenomenon called “Godwinks” (check it out!). Ed invites us to think of Christ not so much as a distant lighthouse beckoning us in a particular direction, but rather as “the ship that keeps us afloat” (Commonweal, Sept. 30, 2025). 

Like a mother holding a restless infant through traumas and the occasional howl, Christ is not an occasional messenger but an abiding presence. In the Gospel we’ll hear on Mother’s Day, Jesus tells his disiples: On that day - Mothers Day? - you will realize that you are in me and I in you.” Here’s a vantage point, says Brother Ed, from which “the world becomes, despite its flaws, a genuinely wondrous place.”   

Gratefully,

Father Dan ofm